Category: Community (Warminster)

From The Warminster Official Guide And Souvenir 1928 (penned by Victor Strode Manley):

. . . . . we step into a broad and imposing street, the Market Place, with the Post Office looking down its length.

The monotony is pleasantly relieved by a small piazza on pillars which juts over the pavement. This is the Old Bell Hotel, a welcome landmark to all who travel on business or pleasure along this high road, assuring them of the best attendance in a comfortable hostelry. Happily, although the interior has been thoroughly modernised, no despoiling landlord has interfered with this interesting relic of the town’s former glory, the great corn market which Cobbett visited, and commented upon the fair dealing of the farmers who sold the corn in sacks, instead of by samples, and paid for it on the nail. In those days no less than fifty inns throve here, with piazzas in front down both sides of the street, under which five hundred wagons unloaded on market days. Highwaymen shadowed the farmers, who, in the absence of banks, were often robbed of their heavy purses on their way home. Now the merry jingle of horse bells has gone, the inns have been converted into spacious and well-stocked modern shops, banks have been built in good style, and stables have become garages. Modernity is the keynote of the town.